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Obama's Executive Privilege Order in Context

US Attorney General Eric Holder attends a press conference at the US Attorney's Office in New York, January 20, 2011.
(Emmanuel Dunand/Getty)

Todd Zwillich, Washington correspondent for The Takeaway, discusses the context and the fallout of President Obama's decision to grant executive privilege to the Justice Department in the Fast and Furious case.

Comments [18]

This is all about race. I'm so surprised that there are so many men of wealth and influence who are very troubled by seeing black men in position of power. This is about going after the black men (Holder and Obama)with power in this administration. Just this weekend I listened to this 'independent editorial' from a NY Democratic leader singling out Obama and Holder for not prosecuting Wall Street executives and asking for a campaign to have all delegates at the Democratic convention this summer to give their votes to Hillary Clinton since she would have done the right thing. No mention of Treasury secretray Geitner (a white man from NY). No mention that the oligarchy and political class in NY has been adamant about not going after Wall street execs because they have been so traumatized by 9/11 and the financial collapse. There was a lot of mention of patriotism and treason. A horrible campaign to deligitimize these well educated, sober, intelligent, patriotic, family men who happen to be black.

The U.S. has been the largest arms exporter in the world and has been for close to 2 decades. It's no surprise that people get killed by our weapons and that potentially eventually Americans will. I mean, even Iran has F-14 Tomcats.

Maybe that's besides the point, as this wasn't arming warlords and dictators, it was arming criminals on our borders. But seriously, this is how law enforcement goes after the big fish. This is nothing new.

Possible scenario... Obama grants executive privilege protection as bait. Republicans focus soley on this until the election. Documents are released a week before the election -- and they show nothing unusual. That would be a big loss for the Republicans.

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